These models could be used in actual prisons or other tight
spaces, like
New York City apartments. Design-savvy prisoners built the
117-square-foot prototype at the Spoleto prison, making
multifunctional furniture out of everyday objects to make a space
that could become a gym, library, office, kitchen, and bedroom.

In these
micro-housing units, a stool
can transform into an oven, a bed becomes a closet, a can
becomes an antenna, and a table becomes a gym, according to the
project's press release.

The tiny
housing modules also have creative storage options, including
shelves made out of cigarette cartons.

These designs could revolutionize prison life if they were
actually implemented, according to Luisa Castellano, former director of
low-security Bollate Penitentiary in Milan.

"The important thing is to avoid a situation in which
prisons are overcrowded containers, crammed full with the
poor and the destitute, tending to promote deviant behavior and
delinquency instead of curbing it," she writes in the Freedom
Room book.

Here are a few more glimpses of what prison life — or just
life in a tiny apartment — could look like.